The Dark Night of the Soul
is a novel about a Ukrainian author, Lev Veles, who embarks on a spiritual journey to seek redemption and make his life cohere. Lev hopes to reconcile with his Russian daughter, Sophia, who believes that he is responsible for her mother's death. In Venice during the height of the pandemic, he meets a grotesquerie of characters at a Carnival ball who challenge his Christian faith. The Dead Bride, the Black Widow, the Doctor, and the Alchemist offer their conflicting views on metaphysics while hiding their own dark secrets. Lev struggles with competing beliefs: science vs. religion; reality vs. illusion; and spirituality vs. nihilism. He is haunted by Mara, a mysterious woman who appears to him in nightmares and tries to convince him to abandon any hope of salvation. Under the guidance of a monk, Lev follows the mystic path to confront his demons and overcome his dark night of the soul. Sophia undertakes her own perilous search for the father of her unborn child. In war-torn Ukraine, she discovers the terrible truth about Lev. In Bucha she learns that human evil is worse than any supernatural evil. Lev's spiritual journey parallels Ukraine's quest for existence: as Russia tries to destroy her spirit, Ukraine must overcome her own dark night of the soul.